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How I Accidently Got Involved with the Syrian Opposition

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During the chilly spring of 2013 I was a humanitarian aid worker waiting for my next mission. Didn’t yet know where I was going but I was busy preparing to lease my flat for the upcoming departure. As I spent my days carrying books to the basement and cleaning out wardrobes – I did this regularly, then carrying everything back up a few months or a year later – I was suddenly accompanied by a newly made friend of mine. A young Syrian woman who decided to drop out of the human rights program she had been brought to Sweden to attend, and apply for asylum. 

“I’m leaving this place tonight,” she said on the phone in a hushed voice. We hung out quite a lot, and had known each other since the year before.

“Where are you going to stay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come here.”

My friend was a beautiful young woman, intelligent and charismatic. But that evening when she showed up with a hastily packed suitcase, other adjectives would have to be used to describe her appearance. 

I did what I usually do when someone moves in with me with short notice; made tea, brought out blankets and a towel. My living room couch was used to hosting people, it actually never complained once, but it had never served someone with so many raw emotions, energy and anxiety at the same time. 

“You’re safe here”, I tried to comfort my friend that very first night, not knowing if I meant safe at my place or in Sweden. 

Fear was nothing new to her. She had after all one of the most dangerous jobs a person can possibly have – the one of being a journalist in Syria. But neither she nor I had thought that the threat of the regime could exist in the form of individuals in Sweden. 

I too was uncomfortable being around this individual, and we agreed not to let anyone know that she was staying with me. Now 11 years have passed, and it’s safe to tell the story.

As we spent most of our time together in my small flat during that chilly month in spring, we started to get to know each other better, and quickly resumed some kind of schedule.

“What are we watching tonight?” she would ask, as she was preparing plates of fruits, biscuits, cheese – much needed plates since we always stayed up late. Sometimes the snacks were accompanied by a bottle of wine if we could afford it; her monthly grant as an asylum seeker had yet to be started.

As we worked our way through seasons of Girls, she started to share more about herself. Her stories were incredible, but she had no idea:

She had been on a journalistic assignment covering the war, when she and the cameraman had to flee by car from people sent out to arrest them. In a hospital they had been able to take cover. She remembered her mouth being so dry that she couldn’t speak. 

When her blog where she wrote about the war crimes committed by the regime became famous, she was arrested with her baby, and it was someone close to her who had snitched, letting the regime know where she was staying. 

During her arrest protests had been organized to demand her release. She showed the online posters with her name and photo – this later became useful evidence in her asylum case.

Listening to her stories of amazing courage became a crash course in the Syrian uprising and taught me how to recognize common patterns – phrasing, reasoning – of Syrian activists trying to bring down the regime. These skills would turn out to be useful later on. I could be accused of many things but not that one of being a bad listener. Or writer.

I had been to Syria before the war and I could relate to her description of her beloved country. Have you ever smelled the jasmine flowers of Damascus in summer? Have you watched the water pass by in the water wheels of Hama? Those are beautiful sights. I would say it’s impossible to visit Damascus and not fall in love with the city and the people. The beauty infiltrated, though, by the underlying threats of violence – a violence not only directed towards political opponents. 

One story I was told by a pro-regime friend said how the ruling family had a part in organizing kidnappings of young, Syrian girls for wealthy men; their mutilated bodies dumped afterwards in lakes, attached to weights. 

“I want to go home”, my friend often said. 

I thought that she would if only she was patient. Much like the people that I got to know in those early years of the revolution, I believed that the Syrian opposition had the strength to overturn a sadistic regime. 

Sure, the opposition was fragmented, without a clear hierarchy, and there was worrying news about extremist groups funded from the outside. But the Arab spring was hopeful. Areas in Northern Syria were taken over by the opposition; the Kurds had support from the other Kurdish regions. The activists I knew were intellectual, reflecting, with a deep longing for freedom and the right to live a life without fear. They must be able to do the change, right?

It wasn’t always easy to host my friend, but I dealt with enough traumatized people to have some tools and boundaries. To help her cope we went out, went to my friends’ parties, cooked dinners. 

Did I mention that she was beautiful? Her looks were actually amazing. Going with her somewhere, people stopped and stared; men kept calling and asking her out. One man was stupid enough to message me on Facebook, asking to wire me money so I could buy her flowers. I agreed, cashed out, we spent the money on ourselves. 

We also loved watching silly movies. One favorite was Crash – when the main character in a rehab center wrote a letter of apology, admitting he was alcoholist and didn’t want to be anymore, we changed the lines to the certain individual she had fled from:

“I’m sorry I pretended to be your friend so I could spy on you for the mukhabarat!” she exclaimed.

“I don’t wanna be an undercover agent for the Assad regime no more!” I latched on, and we laughed hysterically.

So why did I do what I did a few months later? Why did I write the articles that I did? Syria is not my country. I lost friends, pro-regime Syrians, because of it. They saw me as a traitor, someone interfering in an issue that wasn’t mine. 

It was not planned in advance. My friend was, of course, an influence. But also because of her many compatriots that I connected with, my love for them and the country. Syria did not deserve the terror that was brought onto them because they demanded what some take for granted: a system not deflated by corruption; wages enough to live and not only survive on; the right to live a life free of fear. 

And we believed in change, I believed in change. If enough stories came out about the war and the crimes against humanity being committed there would be little chance for the Assad family to stay in power. They would sooner or later leave the country on a private jet heading to Riyadh and never come back, finally giving up a power that was never given to them by the public.  

The day came when I got the call about my assignment. In the evening, my friend asked where I was going. 

“Can you have a seat?” I told her. 

Confused, she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, it was one of the few items in my now empty flat that hadn’t been moved to the basement.

“Why? Where are you going?” 

I hesitated slightly. Then replied.  

“Damascus.”

My Own Private Light in the Global Darkness

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The last weeks were bad weeks for all of us who believe in peace and coexistence. Hell, it’s been a bad year so far. There was the terrorist attack in Tunisia and new reports of young people from Europe being groomed to join IS. A new IS member highlighted in the Swedish news supposedly comes from the projects in Malmö in Sweden, where I once worked as a substitute teacher. Maybe he is one of my former students?

Even though my teaching job was several years ago, I remember my students well and still run in to them downtown sometimes. Unfortunately very few of them have been able to break the cycle of poverty and alienation. I know some of the boys I used to teach are now in jail, and the girls, now young women, I often see pushing strollers outside the discount store, married early and on welfare. And now we are starting to loose some of our young ones to the terror machine of IS. If the new Swedish recruit is one of my former students, this would be almost unbearable to know.

But then last week something happened in my own life, something surprising, that turned things around. Since it’s been a bad year for most of us believers this year, I decided to share the story with you.

On the evening train a young woman sat herself opposite of me. A classy girl, one of those I always envy: nice jacket, glossy hair, carrying a trendy, cream-colored bag full of books and papers. She kept peeking at me from her side of the small table. Suddenly she spoke to me, asked something about a school.

“What?” I unplugged my headphones.

“Were you a teacher in… (the school were I used to teach)?”

“Yeah, I was”, I answered, surprised. “Why?”

“You were my teacher.”

“Your teacher?”

When she said her name, I couldn’t believe it. Was this really she, the young and angry girl that had once been one of my students? I remembered her well: a girl that had possessed the mix of sharp intelligence and inability to make use of her talent. She had confidence, I remember how she in an essay called “My Dream Job” wrote that she wanted to be the Prime Minister of Sweden, whilst other girls wrote that they wanted to marry a football player. But most of her energy she put into fighting with other students and bullying teachers, instead of her schoolwork.

We leaned over the small table between us and hugged. I asked where she was going on the train.

“I’ve been to uni, I commute.”

“You’re at university?”

“Yeah, I study engineering, first year.”

Within seconds, words spilled out. She was studying a bachelor’s engineering program in another city. It was long hours and hard work but she really liked it. After junior high school where I had taught her, she had wanted to get away from the projects and applied to a new high school in the other end of the city. She had coerced her mom to sign the school application.

“My mom didn’t realize why it was better there. You know, she didn’t go to school herself.”

The daughter of uneducated refugees from Kurdistan, she had started a school where everyone else had well-off parents. She had to study more than full time in order to keep up with the other students. Her grammar, vocabulary, everything had been at a much lower level than her peers’. It had been three years of tears and hard studying, and from her family she couldn’t receive any help, but she didn’t cave in. When graduating high school she had the grades to enter university. She stilled lived with her family in the projects, they hadn’t been able to move out, but she wasn’t in touch with anyone of her old classmates. When I asked about the kids that had been in her class – I was curious to know about them – she didn’t know.

“But what about Mohammed?” (one of her best friends, not his real name)

She shrugged.

“I stopped hanging out with all of them. They drained me on my energy. Most of them didn’t finish high school and… I wanted to move on with my life.”

We spoke of politics and she delivered her own opinion about IS and the women’s rights situation in Kurdistan. She asked about me and I said where I have been working – she was thrilled to hear I have been working in Kurdistan. She told of her own plans for the future:

“I might go for a master directly after my program. As a women they’ll always regard me as less than men in this business, you know what engineering is like, so I need to have twice the competence of the men who apply for the same jobs.”

When the train stopped and we went off, she hugged me and wished me good luck for the future. Soon she had disappeared in the early darkness of the March evening, I watched her bouncy ponytail as she disappeared. She, the girl with so little chances who had made it so far, had wished me good luck for the future. It used to be the other way around.

Of course I didn’t tell her, but that evening, she was my light in the global darkness. No matter how far IS will advance, or where European terrorists will strike next time, my former student will still be my light, a hope to hang on to. One million dollars couldn’t beat that feeling.

Our Absolutely Amazing Arabic-Swedish Network

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I’ve been volunteering for NGOs since my university years but I never thought I would start one myself one day; starting NGOs are for career driven young people, not the former high school dropout whose best day is spent tanning at the beach. But sometimes life takes you crazy places.

Back in 2010 I wanted people to practice my Arabic skills with and I found myself with no close Arab friends in my city of Malmö. Around the world language exchange meetings is a big thing and in Malmö you can for example practice French every other week, but Arabic seemed not to be on the agenda – despite the many Arab inhabitants of Malmö and the huge possibility of exchange. Complaining to a friend, she told me about an Arabic speaking girl she had met.

“I think she would be up for it,” my friend said. “Why don’t you send a message?”

This other girl was up for the idea and slowly me and her started to scrape together people to our language exchange meetings, held in Sunday afternoons in different coffee shops. Sometimes it was just her and I, waiting for people who didn’t show up.  But we stayed put, spread the word among our friends, posted online, and by time more people dropped in. When all the emails and text messages got too much we finally decided to start a Facebook page to coordinate the activities. The Arabic-Swedish Network was born.

We are now more than 240 members in the Facebook group and new people join every week. We have no rules for membership other than that you have to be nice to each other; you don’t need to have speak certain level of Arabic or Swedish to join, if you speak none of the languages you can just join in and start from scratch (hey,  there’s too many rules in the Swedish society anyways). New people who has arrived in Sweden and found the group online, takes the opportunity to introduce themselves on the wall and then shows up on the next meeting. As we are so many members nowadays people set up their own events: poetry and sheesha nights, dinner parties, breakfast meetings. I know of many who think Sweden is a difficult place to make new friends and getting in touch with Swedish people – our network is an exception.

Since November this year the Arabic-Swedish network is a registered NGO, we figured it was a good idea since we spend most of our free time on the network anyways; our homepage you’ll find here. Now where will this unplanned NGO go next? I don’t know, but if you’re around, drop in on any of our events – I guarantee you’ll have a good time.

Photo: Copyright Sweden and the Middle East Views Blog